Perfection
by kaz456
Summary: It's a good day to reveal a defining realization. Mark&Roger friendship.


_This is the hardest thing I think I've ever written, just because I'm not used to writing stuff like this to you. But, hey, Rog, we've always been good at the hard stuff, haven't we?_

_And I know you're wondering why I'm writing this. Well, I got to thinking last night, about everything, and I think I figured something out. Remember our first New Year's Eve in the loft?_

_I don't think I could forget it. _

He could remember everything about the night, starting with the glow of Collins' smile in the almost-dark and ending with the green that was practically radiating off of Roger's shirt. It was just how Mark saw things—in details, in flashes of colors and images, in glimpses and variations of views.

He could remember the breeze, and the way that it caused the liquid in his cup to tremble. They were drunk, all three of them, and sitting on the roof, in a circle with three points.

Collins' memorable laugh had rung out into the loudness of the night. And Mark and Roger had watched him, and listened, with lopsided grins on their faces as well. Collins gave off the persona of wisdom, drunk or sober.

"You know what?" Collins had started, and though it was completely unrelated to the discussion they had been having about what color unicorns really were, the interruption seemed to fit. "We're all lookin' for the same thing."

Then he had leaned in, and the other two had leaned in as well. All three of them had bumped their heads, but the benefit of being drunk enough that things were hazy was that their senses had slowed down, so they almost didn't feel it.

"But the paradox is," Collins had continued, his voice lowered to a whisper, as if he were getting ready to reveal the secrets of the universe. "_You'll never find perfection where you look for it_." And he had laughed, and laughed some more, because Collins could find something funny in anything.

_Well, even if you don't remember the entire night, I know you remember what Collins said. So just, keep it in mind, okay? Because I promise I have a point to this, so stop rolling your eyes. _

_When the three of us—you, me, and Benny—met at Brown, the first conversation we had revolved around what all of us hated the most about the place. Benny went first, and he said it was the dorms. Good ol' Benny, even back then he knew that crappy housing would never be enough for him._

_I said it was the way that people would say stuff that was great and insightful and everything—and then they would stop, and just wait for you to tell them how amazing it was. As if there was never any doubt to how apt they were at tapping into untold truths, or something. It was pretentious, yeah, but more than that. When they started only seeing the greatness of themselves, it cheapened the brilliance of their own words._

_And you said that it was the way that people would talk just to talk. They would talk and never have anything to say; talking just to fill up silences and because they didn't know what else to do. (Well, now we know that's a trait not restricted to kids in college)._

_I think Benny and I both got what you meant (back then when Benny actually got that sort of stuff). Words can't capture everything. Or maybe even anything._

_Yeah, I got what you meant, but Maureen and April never did. _

The silence in the loft on those days had never really felt like silence to Mark.

Not because it wasn't authentic—it was; on those days the loudest sounds would be the scratching of Mark's mechanical pencil as he scribbled screenplays and the click of Roger's pen as he scrawled out song lyrics.

It was just that underneath that silence ran an undercurrent of electricity, of productivity. The room may have been quiet, but it was _alive. _There was creativity being unfurled in it, poignancy in the pens and pencils put to paper. In those silences, where Roger and Mark sat on opposite sides of the room, both wrapped up in their respective mediums but completely aware of the comforting presence of the other…there had stretched between them something that seemed to penetrate the stillness. Mark couldn't give it a name, but he was certain that it was something almost magical.

Almost.

"—And then I told her that if she wasn't a lawyer I might have actually believed her." Maureen entered the loft in a flurry of heels clacking and hair swishing and jackets and bags being thrown onto the couch while she flopped down beside Mark.

Following her, laughing loudly and sliding the door shut, was April, who tossed the key onto the metal table before propping herself onto it and swinging her legs absentmindedly.

No one was ever quite as adept at changing the mood of a room as Maureen.

She stretched out on the couch and fixed her gaze on Mark, waiting expectantly.

"Mark," She breathed. "I'm _home._" She waited a beat, and then spun around to look at April. "Don't you hate how quiet they are when we come in? As if we don't even matter or anything."

"A little attention would be nice," April had agreed.

_It always bothered Maureen more than it bothered April. But really, I think it was more the fact that Maureen didn't understand the silences—that was what got to her. April could always give herself over to things she didn't understand. _

_Don't hate me for saying this, Roger, but I think that's what got her in the end._

_You and I have always been able to look at each other and have a conversation without saying a word. And you know, for a long time, it was the exact same thing with my camera—and you with your guitar. I would know, because back when I would record you on stage, there was something there that always made so much sense. You had the passion, and I had the dedication, and all of that got translated into those dynamic silences in the loft. Pragmatism could just go to hell, because we and all of our roommates had it figured out._

_Except we didn't. And more importantly, April didn't, and that was when your guitar stopped making music and all of my scripts started to sound the same, like conformity and pathetic-ness. _

"I think I'll learn to bungee-jump," Mark announced. He hadn't expected much of a reaction from Roger. This was the time when it seemed to take Roger a great amount of effort to _breathe. _He'd be lucky if Roger even acknowledged his presence.

And he was as unlucky as he had always suspected, because he received nothing in response. Roger went right on staring out at the yards of enviable nothingness in front of him.

And it wasn't like Mark really wanted to bungee-jump; he just wanted a reaction out of Roger. He wanted to have good meaningless banter with Roger, something that would distract him from the mess their lives had become ever since Roger had returned from rehab. No, ever since April and Benny and Collins and Maureen had left, in that order. Ever since he had become frustrated with and…and _scared_ by his lack of inspiration for film, cognizant of the overwhelming numbness he felt for everything.

"Think I'll hitchhike to Acapulco," He said, blandly. The silence he heard in response convinced him that Roger was, indeed, not listening, instead choosing to linger between living and existing, apparently afraid to choose either. Christmas Eve, close to nine, and he had nothing to be joyful about.

"Think I'll give up filming," He finally said, quietly and bitterly, the only thing he'd said all evening that had any shred of truth in it.

"_Don't_." At first Mark thought that he had only imagined the word, but when he swung his gaze to look at the couch, he found Roger staring straight back at him.

He was surprised by the words, surprised by the eye contact, surprised by the fact that Roger actually _cared,_ but he could still bring himself to do one thing. He got up off the chair, went into Roger's room, and brought out the guitar.

Roger looked at it. Mark waited.But Roger took it. Mark breathed again. And Roger began to tune.

Because he didn't know what else to do, Mark lifted the camera and began to film.

_Yeah, there was a point when even our "work" turned against us, if that's the appropriate name for what you did with your guitar and what I did with my camera. But that's beside the point. _

_And the point—the entire reason I wrote this, which you must have started to catch on to by now. It's more than that this is the first year, even though I don't have the cash (just like I didn't last year, and the year before that, and etc.), that I've felt like giving you something. Maybe because I know time's running out_.

_What it is, is that I can't leave this as one of those things that goes unsaid between us. I need to spell this out; it's too true for me not to._

_It all goes back to that night with Collins, and also to last night. Because I was thinking, Rog—last night we were just sitting here, you and I, laughing at that stupid article in that Entrepreneur magazine Collins brought over that actually had Benny in it. And it just hit me, because things have always been so easy with us. Not the circumstances—those have been pretty hard. But what I mean is that between me and you, Mark and Roger, things have been easy. _

_And as for that New Year's Eve, where you and Collins and I were drunk out of our minds, and Collins said that thing about everyone looking for perfection…_

_You and I, we're not perfect. But we always looked for perfection in everything else, in everything around us. In our college, in our relationships, in our work, in our whole damn lives. But we were so busy looking that we missed what's been there all along. It's that thing you talked about that you can't put words to, the thing that our girlfriends could never understand, the thing that got both of us back to doing what we love when we hated it most. It's perfection, and it's in our friendship._

_Happy Birthday, Rog. _


End file.
